*Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that blocks Americans and companies from making transactions with ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok.
The ban goes into effect in 45 days, unless Microsoft or some other American company buys the popular video sharing app, Deadline reports.
In a letter to congressional leaders, Trump said that TikTok’s “data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
“TikTok also reportedly censors content that the Chinese Communist Party deems politically sensitive, such as content concerning protests in Hong Kong and China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities,” Trump wrote. “TikTok may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party.”
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In letter to Congress President Donald Trump calls TikTok a threat to national security because the data the app collects. The letter says: “This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information…” #TikTok
— Edward Lawrence (@EdwardLawrence) August 7, 2020
TikTok slammed Trump’s executive order as “undermining the rule of law.”
“We are shocked by the recent Executive Order, which was issued without any due process,” the company wrote in a statement Friday morning. “For nearly a year, we have sought to engage with the US government in good faith to provide a constructive solution to the concerns that have been expressed. What we encountered instead was that the Administration paid no attention to facts, dictated terms of an agreement without going through standard legal processes, and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses.”
Trump also signed an executive order to ban transactions with the Chinese-owned WeChat app.
“This Executive Order risks undermining global businesses’ trust in the United States’ commitment to the rule of law, which has served as a magnet for investment and spurred decades of American economic growth,” TikTok said. “And it sets a dangerous precedent for the concept of free expression and open markets. We will pursue all remedies available to us in order to ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and our users are treated fairly – if not by the Administration, then by the US courts.”
Microsoft is in talks to buy TikTok, and said it would close negotiations by September 15.
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